Saturday, August 11, 2012

Genres we have discussed thus far

Genres we have discussed thus far.....

1. Blues-This music was the music of African slaves, which came out of work songs. Later, guitar was added. Blues began as a musical song form which expressed great suffering, and has a raw quality, due to it's melismatic, expressive vocals and bent notes. Initially a folk music, Blues has influenced almost all of American folk and popular music. The form of the Blues is typically a 12 bar, AA'B form, although it is often modified. Much of today's jazz has been influenced by blues, although it might be hard to hear for novice jazz listeners, since the "blues" elements are more obscure and intellectualized than the blues elements found in rock or soul music.

2. Sprituals: We haven't yet had a chance to talk about spirituals, but these were an important link in the chain of European and African cultural mixing which influenced American music. Negro spirituals stem from the attempt to make the African slaves Christians. Most Spiritual melodies use the pentatonic scale combined with European harmony. Here's a great lesson on Spirituals:

3. Ragtime-Not technically jazz, but a pre-jazz form which combined banjo syncopation, marching band forms and oom pah bass and melodic sensibilities and minstrel music to create a unique, lively solo piano music. Later, ragtime was played by brass bands and became more improvised: the forms remained for a while, but the rhythm became looser and more "swung". This is how early jazz developed into a style of it's own. But we use Scott Joplin as the go to composer of ragtime music, which was very popular from the late 1800's up until the 1910's.

4. Early jazz/New Orleans Jazz/Dixieland jazz- Brass bands were part of the rich musical landscape in turn of the century New Orleans. Their version of improvised ragtime and blues became jazz. We listened to Louis Armstrong and his Hot Fives and also the Hot Sevens. The typical dixieland front line is cornet( or trumpet), clarinet, and trombone; typically, the first melodic statement is all three instruments improvising at once.

5. Tin Pan Alley to the music of the Great American Songbook. But it was an actually place; "Tin Pan Alley" was the nickname given to the street where many music
publishers worked during the period of 1880 to 1953. In the late 19th
century, New York had become the epicenter of songwriting and music
publishing, and publishers converged on the block of West 28th Street
between Broadway and Sixth Avenue in Manhattan. There are several
stories about how the block got its name. One that is often repeated
tells of a reporter for the New York Herald who was hired to write about
the new business of sheet music publishing in the city. As he walked
down 28th Street toward the publishing offices, he heard the dissonant
chords and strings of competing pianos through the open windows. The
sound, he remarked, sounded like a bunch of tin pans clanging.

6. Swing grew out of dixieland. The rhythm and harmony was very similar, but the ensembles grew larger- into what we now think of as big bands. Instead of three instruments improvising together, there was a tighter, more "riff" oriented sound. We listened to some Duke Ellington, some Fletcher Henderson(who arguably created the formula for big band swing) and Benny Goodman, who made jazz popular with young, white audiences. Some say this was the last time that jazz was "popular" music.

7. Stride Piano was the virtuoso, swinging, fast, virtuoso version of ragtime. It was perfected by musicians like James. P Johnson, Fats Waller, and Willie "The Lion" Smith. Stride piano is associated with the Harlem Renaissance of the 20's and 30's; Harlemites would hold "rent parties" and feature stride pianists in "cutting contests", where they would try to out do each other by playing faster and more exciting arrangements.

8. Bebop was a reaction to swing. Players like saxophonist Charlie Parker, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, and pianists Theolonious Monk and Bud Powell created a fast, complicated sounding extension of jazz. The rhythm was swing, but oftentimes using ultra-fast(not always) tempos and difficult, challenging chord changes. Many of the melodies were "contrafacts", which means a new melody over existing chord changes. The music was crazy sounding to many, and was assuredly NOT for dancing.

9. Cool Jazz was a reaction to bebop; musicians wanted a relief from the frenetic chord sequences and fast tempos. Many white musicians are associated with cool jazz. Miles Davis' "Birth Of The Cool" is considered a landmark cool jazz album. Modal jazz is associated with cool jazz, since players could stretch out on one or a handful of chords(or "modes"). Some people associate cool jazz with West Coast Jazz. We listened to some Lennie Tristano and Lee Konitz, who were just as virtuosic as Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, only more cerbebral and less blues influenced.

10. Hard Bop is sometimes hard to distinguish from bebop; however, when we think about the soulful, hard driving music of musicians like pianist Horace Silver and drummer Art Blakey, we can see that this was a movement which brought back the "soulful" elements to jazz- blues, gospel, and groove.

11. Free Jazz was another reaction to Bebop. Free jazz is an approach to jazz
music that was first developed in the 1950s and 1960s. Though the music
produced by free jazz composers varied widely, the common feature was a
dissatisfaction with the limitations of bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz,
which had developed in the 1940s and 1950s. Each in their own way, free
jazz musicians attempted to alter, extend, or break down the
conventions of jazz, often by discarding hitherto invariable features of
jazz, such as fixed chord changes or tempo.
While usually considered experimental and avant-garde, free jazz has
also oppositely been conceived as an attempt to return jazz to its
"primitive", often religious roots, and emphasis on collective
improvisation.

12. Jazz
fusion, fusion, or jazz-rock is a musical fusion genre that developed from
mixing funk and R&B rhythms and the amplification and electronic effects of
rock music, complex time signatures derived from non-Western music and
extended, typically instrumental compositions with a jazz approach to lengthy
group improvisations, often using wind and brass and displaying a high level of
instrumental technique. The term "jazz rock" is often used as a
synonym for "jazz fusion" as well as for music performed by late
1960s and 1970s-era rock bands that added jazz elements to their music. Some
progressive rock is also labelled"fusion".

13. Gypsy
jazz (also known as gypsy swing or hot club jazz) is a style of jazz music
often said to have been started by guitarist Jean "Django"
Reinhardt in the 1930s. Because its origins are largely in France it is often
called by the French name, "jazz manouche", or alternatively, "manouche
jazz", even in English language sources. Django was foremost among a group of Gypsy
guitarists working in and around Paris in the 1930s through the 1950s, a group
which also included the brothers Baro, Sarane, and Matelo Ferret and Reinhardt's brother Joseph
"Nin-Nin" Reinhardt.

14. Flamenco
is a genre of Spanish music, song and dance from Andalusia, in southern Spain,
that includes cante
(singing), toque (guitar playing), baile (dance) and palmas
(handclaps). First mentioned in literature in 1774, the genre grew out of Andalusian and
Romani music and dance styles. Flamenco Jazz combines the passion, exotic scales and improvisation with the harmony and sophistication of modern jazz. Chano Dominguez is the most famous Flamenco Jazz musician at the moment.

15 •Brazilian Jazz has become something that most of today’s jazz musicians are expected to
know something about. Bossa and
Samba beats, and even a baião has
become a natural part of the repertoire of rhythms. Well known Brazilian jazz
artists include Trio Da Paz,
Elaine Elias, and HermetoPascoal. The first bossa nova was presented by singer Joao Gilberto, singer/ composer Antonio Carlos Jobim, and saxophonist Stan Getz.

16•Latin
jazz is jazz with Latin American rhythms. Although musicians continually expand
its parameters, the term Latin jazz is generally understood to have a more
specific meaning than simply jazz from Latin America. A more precise term might
be Afro-Latin jazz, as the jazz sub-genre typically employs rhythms that either
have a direct analog in Africa, or exhibit an African influence. The two main
categories of Latin jazz are:

•Afro-Cuban
jazz—jazz rhythmically based on clave, often with a rhythm section employing ostinato
patterns from Cuban popular dance music.

•Afro-Brazilian
jazz—includes bossa nova
and jazz samba.

•In
1993 trombonist, composer, and arranger William Cepeda created a sub-genre he calls Afro-Rican
jazz, which blends jazz with the African elements of Puerto Rican music.

When people are talking about Salsa music, most often they mean Afro Cuban or Afro Carribean music.